Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486), The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems

Syncretism in the West develops a cross-cultural model of the evolution of premodern religious, philosophical, and cosmological thought, viewed through the exaggerated syncretic system developed in Pico’s 900 theses. Pico planned to debate the theses at Rome before the Pope and leaders of “all schools.” The book contains a corrected Latin edition of Pico’s text, the first English translation (the only reliable translation in any language), and a commentary on Pico’s debate, in which he planned to discuss (and partially harmonize) all major traditions known in his day. The cross-cultural model developed through study of the 900 theses discusses the neurobiological grounds of primitive religious thought and the systematic ways in which that thought was transformed by writers like Pico over thousands of years in manuscript traditions. One novel aspect of that model is its ability to be implemented in a series of simple computer simulations — the first of their type used to model the evolution of premodern thought. The simulations mimic the ways that syncretic processes operated in manuscript traditions, generating the kinds of multileveled ‘correlative’ (or fractal) structures typical world-wide of traditional religious, philosophical, and cosmological systems.